“Aine, wait. Let me explain.” He spoke softly, as if she was a frightened fawn.
“There’s nothing to explain.” She got shakily to her feet. He made no move to stop her as she grabbed the sword from where he’d dropped it, holding it defensively in front of her, and backing away from him. “I tried to help you. You tried to kill me. That’s obvious.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I could control myself, but I was dying.”
“So you tried to kill me to save yourself?”
“It’s true that I needed your blood to save myself, but I would never have killed you.” He passed a hand over his face. “That’s why you had to drink from me. You saved me, little Healer, and in return I restored you.”
“Restored me? You used me!” Aine whirled around and started to run up the side of the gully.
“Don’t go, Aine-” Tegan tried to stand, but his leg gave way and he crumpled to the ground.
At the same instant Aine cried out and fell to the ground, too.
Deathly pale, she stared wide-eyed at him. “I feel your pain. What have you done to me?”
Chapter Eight
“We’ve shared blood,” Tegan said.
“I know that, and while it’s disgusting it doesn’t make this understandable.” Aine pointed to her ankle where the pain that had spiked through it was fading, but still entirely too real to have been a hysterical hallucination.
Tegan looked away from her, sighed, and then reluctantly met her gaze. “The sharing of blood is part of how my people mate. It binds us together.”
“That is not possible.”
“Listen with your heart and you will know the truth.”
“Listen with my heart? That’s ridiculous.” But even as she spoke Tegan’s eyes seemed to trap her. Aine felt pulled within their amber depths. Before she realized what she was doing, she’d taken a couple steps towards him. She came to herself suddenly and stopped so abruptly it was as if she’d slammed into a glass wall. “This can’t happen.”
Tegan cocked his head to the side, and gave her a sad, slight smile. “Do you find me so repulsive?” He hurried on. “I thought you a goddess when I first saw you.”
“You’re a demon. If there’s a bond between us it’s an evil spell you’ve placed on me.”
Tegan sighed, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m too tired to place a spell on you. Evil or otherwise.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So you admit you worship a dark god.”
Aine thought she saw something flicker in his amber eyes.
“I do not worship darkness.”
“Why should I believe you? You did just try to kill me.”
“I did not try to kill you. I’m sorry I drank from you uninvited, but my intention wasn’t to harm you-it was to save myself.”
“At any cost.”
“No. Not at the cost of your life. I stopped before I…” he trailed off, unwilling to continue.
“Before you killed me. And then you did this to me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said somberly. “But what I did can’t be undone.”
“What! You mean I’ll always feel your pain?”
He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he finally did that rich, musical tone was back in his deep voice. “It isn’t only my pain you can feel, Aine.”
His voice…his eyes…they drew her. Aine took another step forward. And then another.
“This bond we’ve forged,” he said. “It’s not so terrible. It’s how my people mate-how they love.”
The attraction Aine felt for him was raw and strong. Even lying there, wounded and battered, she could see the powerful male creature he was and be drawn to the mystery of him.
It’s because I drank his blood! Aine took a step back, shutting her mind to the fact that even before he’d forced her to drink from him she’d been intrigued enough by Tegan that she’d chosen to help him.
“I’ve done all I can for you. Leave. Return to wherever you came from. Just hurry because as soon as I get back to the castle I’m going to send them after you.”
Aine closed her mind and her heart. Resolutely, she turned her back on him and began to retrace the short path to Maev’s pyre.
She’d taken up the reins of the cart and had pointed the horse’s head down the road to the castle when the first of the pains speared down her leg. Aine gritted her teeth and clucked the horse into a sluggish trot.
The next pain made her gasp. He’d fallen. She could feel it. He was trying to walk and he couldn’t. Not by himself.
“You shouldn’t care.” Aine told herself. But care or not, she was a Healer, and the suffering of others affected her-it always had. “Epona!” She called into the night.
“Help me. What should I do? Did you lead me to him so that Partholon could be warned or so that he could be saved?”
The silence of the night was her only answer.
Aine closed her eyes. She did her best to shut out the phantom pain from Tegan. I need to follow my instinct. So what did her instinct tell her to do?
The answer came at once with all subtly of a rampaging wild boar. Her heart, her soul, her body, all were screaming at her to return to Tegan.
It was only her mind that called her a silly, stupid girl as she turned the cart around and urged the horse to take her back to him.
Chapter Nine
Tegan wasn’t difficult to find. He stumbled into the clearing where Maev’s pyre still smoldered when Aine pulled the carthorse, who was suddenly acting uncharacteristically skittish, to a halt. He collapsed to the grass, not bothering to look up at her.
“Were you trying to follow me?” Aine climbed from the cart and approached him warily, wishing the piercing pain in her leg would stop.
He drew several gasping breaths before he answered her. “Not following you. Just trying to get back.” He did glance up then, motioning vaguely in the direction of the castle.
“By the Goddess! To Guardian Castle?”
His brow wrinkled and he gave her a look that clearly said he thought she might be soft in the head. “Of course not. My cave is in the Trier Mountains. I’ve stayed clear of the castle.” Then his gaze focused on the pyre and understanding widened his expressive eyes. “This is Maev. The woman you thought I killed.”
“She was a centaur Huntress.” Speaking slowly, Aine corrected him. Then the truth hit her. Tegan hadn’t killed Maev. She felt it just as surely as she felt the pain in his leg.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said.
“I know.” She made her decision quickly. “Get in the cart. I’ll take you back to your cave.”
“And then you’ll bring warriors there to kill me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do about you,” she said truthfully. “If I touch you-help you into the cart-will you bite me?”
The slight, sad smile touched his lips again. “Do you want me to?”
“No.” Aine said firmly, rubbing at the bruised spot on her neck.
“You are safe from me, little Healer. I lost control before only because I was on the brink of death. Your blood strengthened me. I am in no danger of dying, so you are in no danger of me drinking from you.” He paused before adding, “Unless you wish it.”
“Then I’ll be safe from you forever,” she said under her breath as she went to him and offered her hand.